


Know that the Kids are Alright

by QueenForADay



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Children, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Marriage, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 09:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4095583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenForADay/pseuds/QueenForADay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Jak 3, Jak claims his birthright of ruling over Spargus. Keira joins him in the Wastelands soon after, and this is their life together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Know that the Kids are Alright

**Author's Note:**

> I recently found this game series again in the bowels of my game-shelf...It was buried underneath sheets and dust.

When Jak found the courage to reveal to Sig that he was Damas’ son, he was met with little judgement. He had kept the amulet his father handed to him as the last breath of life left his body, before Jak went racing after Veger and putting an end to the man’s schemes.

Jak has heard whisperings among the people inside the palace that Sig was to reign in Damas’ place, but after many sleepless nights, he decided to tell his friend the truth – he told him about the child inside Haven City, he told him about the amulet Damas handed to him before he died, he told him everything.

Sig happily let the younger man climb the steps to the throne’s dais, and let him rule himself knowing that Jak’s home was Spargus and the Wasteland that encircles it.

Keira joined him out in Spargus not long after that. With dreams of becoming a sage like her father, she knew that the monks within the city walls would help her understand Eco like no one in Haven city would. With that move from Haven to Spargus, Jak and Keira started their lives together among the people of Spargus.

 

*

 

Days and nights in the desert were vastly different. In the night, fires would be lit around the palace to keep up the warmth that would escape through the large, opened windows and into the cooling night air. With an opened balcony window, Jak’s room was no exception. With a beautiful view out onto the city, its wall and the desert beyond lit only by the bright moon, Keira loved the view, and was often found out on the balcony staring out onto what she and Jak ruled together.

After spending a day in the desert with Sig, scouting for Precursor artefacts, Jak returned to their shared room, with the doors to the balcony opened and Keira standing outside keeping a vigil over the dormant city.

He smiled and pulled off most of the dust-ridden armour and made his way over to her.

“It’s beautiful,” she said gently as he joined her side and wrapped an arm around her waist. Her hands were together, with one twisting the ring on her ring finger around in circles. Something was bothering her, Jak noticed as he pulled her closer to his warm body. “You weren’t long out in the Wasteland.”

“Sig miscalculated the amount of artefacts we needed to get,” Jak answered, “We only have a few.”

“It’s better than nothing,” she smiled and pushed back from the railing of the balcony. Jak followed her into their shared room in the palace – it was the largest, and still filled with whatever trinkets and artefacts Jak’s father had collected for himself. Keira sat on the bed, and looked up to him, still twisting her wedding ring around her finger.

“There’s no point trying to keep it away from you, is there?” she asked, looking straight ahead of her when Jak sat down beside her. “I’ve been feeling sick recently – I thought it was because of the motor fumes and the heat out here, but one of the monks said to get checked just in case.”

Jak frowned and turned from his seat of the bed to look more at Keira.

“I’m pregnant,” Keira said in one breath of air. She stopped turning her wedding finger and went to grab Jak’s hand, before pressing it to her abdomen. “The monk suspected as much.”

Jak’s eyes moved from his hand on Keira’s middle back up to her worried face. “When did you find out?”

“This morning, before you left for the Wastelands with Sig,” she gave a small smile, “I thought I would wait until you got back, rather than having you go out on a mission with this information.”

Jak huffed a laugh. He got up from his seat beside Keira to drop down in front of her, kneeling on the ground. Thoughts were flashing through his mind, but he pushed them aside for know. Keira was smiling brightly down at him, before wrapping her arms around his neck and dragging him up for a kiss.

When they were settled on the bed, Jak pulled away with a small laugh. “Your father will kill me.”

Keira ran her hand through Jak’s short hair. “He’ll learn to live with it.”

 

*

 

Announcing to the city that Keira was pregnant went as well as he could have hoped. The people of the city celebrated as they always did whenever god news reached them, and celebrations normally lasted a week.

Old friends from Haven city joined them in Spargus, with Daxter being on the first hellcat over. He, along with Tess, kept within the palace walls, drinking with others and sharing his infamous stories with the people of Jak’s court. Most seem to buy the ridiculously over-exaggerated stories that Daxter told, alongside Tess who seemed to be all over the ottsel.

Jak remained with Keira as the pair made their way through various old friends like Torn and Ashelin. They had told him about what had been happening inside in Haven City – how the peace was brought back after the gang lords had been run from the city following the death of Veger.

“You’re always welcomed back, you know,” Ashelin said when Torn left them to talk to Daxter about his latest story. Jak felt Keira tighten her grip on his arm, and he placed his hand over hers.

“We’re happy here,” he answered truthfully, with Keira giving a slight nod. “But thank you for the offer.”

“I made sure the people of Haven know that you’re their hero and not their villain,” Ashelin replied, looking over to Torn and the ottsel having a loud argument about a piece of Daxter’s story that seemed to be blown a bit too out of proportion.

“I’m still staying here,” Jak said finally, giving as much of finality to his voice as he could muster without giving Ashelin heat for even asking. The new Baroness of Haven City nodded and went to collect her commander of her guard.

The party droned on into the late night, with the cold of the desert’s night crawling into the palace through the opened windows. Keira’s arm around Jak’s tightened again, and the man gave her a sympathetic look. “You don’t have to stay here you know – you could go to rest. Everyone would understand.”

She shook her head. “My dad still has to get here, and I want to be here when he does. Besides, I’m enjoying seeing everyone again.”

Jak smiled and stopped in front of the dais leading up to the throne of the monarch to Spargus. Everyone around them was in their own conversation, with the mutterings of all of them joining together to flood out their own private conversation.

“We still have a lot to do before the baby arrives,” Keira said, wrapping her arms around Jak’s neck. She wasn’t even close to showing, but the constant morning sickness and aches in joints just confirmed what she was told.

“Like?”

“A name,” she answered, “I have one if it’s a boy.”

Jak frowned slightly. “You already have a name for our child? I think I should have some say in it.”

“I was going to name him Damas.”

Jak froze. His arms had come to wrap around his wife’s waist, but stopped at her hips. His blue eyes widened slightly but he remained calm.

“If you don’t want to I understand-”

“-No, I do,” Jak answered quickly, pulling Keira into him. “You just caught me off guard for a minute.”

Keira smiled. “I just thought that, since your father isn’t here to see all of this, to see what you have become, we could have a little one running around the palace causing all sorts of trouble.”

Jak gave a small laugh.

“And I think it’d be cute – you teaching little Damas to race through the sand dunes, taking down metalheads just like his daddy.”

“I’m sure our child, regardless of if it’s a boy or not, would appreciate their mother teaching them all about Eco and whatever else a sage can teach.”

Keira brightened before she leaned up to press her lips against Jak’s. Her arms tightened around his neck before she pulled away. They still stayed close together, ignoring the commotion of chattering around them, until the familiar feeling of paws crawling up Jak’s back brought him back to the present.

“Congrats you two,” Daxter beamed from his place on Jak’s shoulder. Keira reached over to scratch underneath his chin as she giggled. “I’m the kid’s uncle, right Jak?”

“Right Dax, whatever you want,” Jak said. The ottsel looked between his friend and his wife before asking, “What will you be naming the tyke?”

Jak looked to Keira and pressed a small kiss to her forehand. “Damas, we’re naming him Damas.”

Daxter frowned. “What if it’s a girl?”

“I know it’s a boy,” Keira answered simply with a knowing smile on her face.

 

*

 

Months rolled by and with every passing of a moon-phase, new worries made their way into Jak’s mind. They would attack him at night, when he and Keira would be tangled in each other, regardless of the growing child in Keira’s abdomen.

Moonlight streamed into the bedroom, lighting everything in a white haze of brightness. Jak laid on his back, rubbing patterns into Keira’s bare back, pressing light kisses into her forehead with every disgruntled move the woman made trying to sooth the kicking child inside her.

The two voices in his head were at it again – both of them were throwing arguments at each other, with Jak being a third party and listening to each of them. Staring up to the roof of the bedroom, he listened one last time to tonight’s argument – the only one that seemed to constantly strike coldness into his heart.

_It’ll never happen._

**_How do you know? We’re already making our way through the boy’s system, why not the kid?_ **

_It doesn’t work like that._

**_What we’re made of is strange – we don’t even know how we work. All we know is that since we’re a part of this host, why aren’t we a part of his offspring?_ **

_Because a child is a child – innocent and unconnected to the faults of their parents, even if the fault is made of Dark Eco._

**_We’ll see – if the child is born with pale white skin and dark purple hair with horns, don’t come crying to us..._ **

Jak blinked the voices away. He gave a loud sigh into the silent room and untangled himself from Keira’s body. He draped the sheets over her small frame and made sure she was warm enough before seeking out his civilian clothes of a worn cloth tunic and brown trousers with leather boots. Samos had landed in the city a few days after the party, sending transmissions to the palace that the weather between Haven City and Spargus was too bad for a jet to fly through and that he would be late. Keira was disappointed, but it took a few days for her father to get here and for Jak to muster up the courage to face the girls’ father.

He sought him out through the darkness of the palace. Sig’s guards were on patrol, and Jak pulled two aside ordering them to stand guard outside Jak’s bedroom door. The nodded and went through the maze of corridors, and left Jak to seek out the sage who he knew would be awake through the night studying the life outside the walls of Haven City.

This was the hundredth visit the sage had made since finding out his daughter had fallen with child, and even told the two that he would maintain his visits until the child was old enough to fend for itself.

Jak found Samos in his own private study, poking and prodding at a crystallised gem of Eco. It glowed bright green, and dimmed when Samos pulled away whatever instruments he was using on it. His gaze flickered up to the young man standing at the door.

“You should be asleep,” the old sage said casually, returning to poke metal pins at the crystal.

Jak ran a hand through his short blond hair. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Bad dreams, I suppose,” Jak said, stepping into Samos’ study. Some of his research from Haven City sat stacked on his main desk, alongside smaller crystals of Eco gathered from the desert by Jak and Sig’s men.

“Are they from when you were in the Baron’s prisons?”

“No, no,” Jak shook his head and sat down opposite the old sage, watching him continue with his experiments. “Bad dreams about...the baby.”

Samos’ hand paused. “And what are the bad dreams about, exactly?”

“It’s not really a _dream_ , exactly, but,” Jak sighed, “I think about what would happen if the Dark Eco in my body makes its way into the baby. What if they’re born with this...illness...that I have?”

Samos looked over to Jak. The boy tilted his head sideways. “That can’t happen, right?”

The sage dropped his instruments and wiped green shavings from the crystal off of his hands before taking a seat in front of Jak. “I can’t give you an answer to that, my boy,” he sighed, “mostly because I don’t know. Dark Eco, it is...strange. It doesn’t behave like normal Green Eco. I could perform tests on you, but I would have to wait for the baby to be born before even attempting-”

“-You’re not performing anything on our child,” Jak said quickly, glaring at his old mentor. “I’m just asking.”

“Of course not,” Samos shook his head. “I wouldn’t think too much about it, my boy. Dark Eco has never been fully understood, and neither has genetics. Putting the two of them together is something very confusing, indeed.”

Jak gave a small smile before pushing up from his chair. “I thought I would come to you for help, just in case.”

“I’m glad you did,” Samos nodded, “I’ll always be here to help in whatever way I can.”

 

*

 

Keira went into labour when Jak was out hunting metalheads. A crackling voice came from his comm on his buggy. Daxter’s ears twitched at the sound of a voice coming through the comm and hopped off of Jak’s shoulder, knowing his friend would be better at taking down metalheads without the added weight of himself on his shoulder.

He hopped up into the vehicle and listened to the message, before yelling out to Jak that Keira had gone into labour. They were a long journey away from the palace, with only the top spire of the palace barley showing among the distant horizon.

Jak looked to Sig who only gave the younger man a nod back to his vehicle before Jak raced over to the buggy. Setting it into full speed, he left a dust cloud behind him as he drove quickly towards the palace, with Daxter holding onto the railings of the vehicle for dear life.

The guards let him through the various gates into the city before he scampered up the steps to the palace, with Daxter trailing behind him. By the time the ottsel had caught up with his friend, he was standing among a gathering of Sig’s palace soldiers and friends o both Jak and Keira. They were all huddled outside, with Jak being ushered to the front, until he stood motionless in front of the door. He looked over to his friend, and Daxter gave a nod to the door, smiling. “I’ll wait out here for you, buddy.”

Inside the room there were only a handful of maids still moving around the room. They all acknowledged him and let him walk forward to Keira.

“I didn’t miss it, did I?” he asked carefully, watching Keira sit up against the bed’s headboard with a wince.

He sat beside her, letting her head fall onto his shoulder. Running his hand through her wet hair, he noticed a gathering of three maids standing in front of a table, all with white rags and blankets.

“He’s here,” Keira said softly, taking one of Jak’s hands in hers. “Damas is here.”

Jak swallowed as one of the maids turned to the pair with a bundle in her arms. She handed it to Keira who smiled down into the face wrapped among blankets. “Hello Damas,” she whispered, watching the tiny baby flicker his eyes open, only to squint them again and give a full-body wiggle in her arms.

Jak sat wordlessly beside her, watching the child snuff and wrinkle his nose, and wave a clenched fist around at the feeling of Keira pulled back some of the blankets near his face. She looked up at Jak and gave a bright smile. “Well? Say hello to your son.”

Jak looked between his wife and their son before letting Keira hand over Damas. He squirmed beneath the blankets, but settled into the warmth that radiated off of Jak’s body. The maids in the room left through the main door, and Jak caught a peek of everyone swivelling through the opened crack to catch a glimpse of what is inside the room.

Keira leant down into Jak’s shoulder again and sighed happily. “Everyone will want to see him.”

“I know.”

“We should let them in then.”

“You need to rest,” Jak answered wrapping one arm around Keira’s body, while holding their child comfortably in the crook of his other. “They can wait.”

“I don’t think Daxter or my dad will,” she laughed against his shoulder, placing a small kiss there before nuzzling into his neck. Damas gave a large, open-mouthed yawn before snuggling into his cocoon of blankets. His ears weren’t as long as his parents, with only slightly pointed nubs at best. He had tufts of Keira’s dark teal hair, but Jak had caught a glimpse of his bright blue eyes in Damas. He was pudgy, with flailing limbs and a scrunched up face, but now he was in a sleep that removed all of that. He looked peaceful.

To Jak’s delight, he noticed his skin was the tanned colour of his own, and not the blaring white of his darker self. But that could change – he tried to push the thoughts away and focus on what was happening now.

Keira had fallen into sleep along with their son. He gently lowered her back into the mess of pillows that headed their bed, and pulled a light blanket up to her chest. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and went to introduce their son to his friends outside the door.

 

*

 

“Pa!”

“Brace yourself,” Keira laughed into Jak’s chest at the sound of their bedroom door swinging open. Jak’s arms tightened around Keira’s frame before the weight of a young child bounced onto the end of the bed, and scampered up to meet his parents.

“Papa!”

“He’s awake, sweetheart.”

“No he isn’t,” Jak answered through the muffled sound of pressing his face into the hair of Keira. The woman laughed and untangled herself from Jak only get an armful of a bouncing young elf. He squirmed and laughed as his mother pulled him down to nestle between her and his father. Jak peered up to Keira who only wore the same bright smile she always wore whenever Damas was around.

The prospect of getting sleep that morning went out the window with every little amused noise that came from the three year old. He peered down to the sight of Damas wriggling out of his mother’s arms to climb on top of his father.  “What are you doing, squirt?” he asked amused.

“You’re a metalhead! And I’m you, Pa,” he giggled as he flopped down onto his dad’s chest in some attempt to pin him down. Keira laughed at the sight – Damas wasn’t the biggest of the children in the city, and ever since leaving the city, the constant weathering of the desert and fight-training with Sig had definitely put muscle on Jak’s bones. She didn’t miss the slightly worried look Jak gave to their son at the mention of metalheads – he often came running into their room during the night because of the creatures haunting his nightmares. He had never seen them, but she and Jak both had a feeling that Daxter and his stories had something to do with it.

“I suppose you intend on winning this fight, do you squirt?” Jak smiled as he tried to pry the limbs of his son from him.

“I do! Because I’m you, and you’re strong and brave, and no metalhead stands a chance when you fight them!”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Daxter told me! Daxter’s always right!”

Keira couldn’t help but snigger. She aided in prying Damas away from Jak’s chest and plopping him back down to his usual position of lying between them. He gave a squeal and tried to get back onto his father, but gave up with a tired huff.

Jak laid back into the cushions and looked at both Damas and Keira. His hand went around the back of his wife’s head before he pulled her into a kiss. “Good morning,” he said against her lips. He ignored the “eww” sound squealed by his son, and looked down at him. With a puff of dark teal hair and bright blue eyes, he was the perfect mixture of both of them.

“Can we go out into the Wasteland today?” he asked with a bright smile.

Keira frowned. “Sweetheart you know it’s dangerous beyond the city’s walls.”

The boy pouted and looked to Jak. “Please, Pa?”

“Your mother is right, squirt,” Jak said, “I can’t take you with me.”

“Even for a bit of the way?”

“Absolutely not.”

Jak watched the boy’s pout deepen before he looked up to Keira. “I’m sure Sig can stay behind to take you places inside the walls?”

Keira almost laughed at the swiftness the boy’s sadness was overtaken by joy. “Yes please, Pa!”

The boy loved Sig, as they all did, but he saw the elder Wastelander as some sort of hero from tales Daxter would usually tell. Whenever he was refused to go to the desert with his father, Sig had told Keira that the boy would always find some way to find him and ask him instead. Damas was definitely like the both of them, not just in looks but in personality.

Damas hurtled out of bed with the knowledge that he was going to walk with Sig today and ran out into the hallways. “Make sure it’s alright with him first!” Jak yelled out the door.

Keira laughed and made to get out bed, ready to continue with the work she had been doing on the men’s vehicles, but stopped when Jak caught her wrist. “Where do you think you’re going, your Highness?” he smiled and pulled her back down onto the bed.

“Not that I’m objecting but,” she said as Jak climbed between her legs and kissed along her neck, “I’m sure that Prince Damas is waiting for you to find Sig.”

“Damas knows exactly where Sig is in the morning,” Jak answered lifting her leg up to wrap around his waist, “that leaves me free for you.”

Keira smiled when their lips met. The angle was a bit off, but Jak tilted his head to meet her fully. She pulled away with a slight hitch in her voice. “I need to get to work soon.”

Jak smiled down at her, running his finger through her hair. “You will,” he said, pecking his lips over her forehead, her temple and down to her cheek. “I promise.”

 

*

 

It wasn’t unusual for Keira to work on vehicles late into the night. When Jak walked passed her workshop and saw half of her body sticking out from underneath a desert-rover, he smiled and continued to walk past with a sleep-heavy Damas in his arms.

Mutterings of adventures during the day came from the boy, followed by long bouts of silence when Jak knew he had fallen asleep again, only to wake up and continue his story like nothing happened.

When they had reached Damas’ room, Jak nodded to the single guard outside to open the door and let him in. His room was much smaller than Jak and Keira’s with a single bed in the middle surrounded by toys fashioned from parts by Keira.

Jak reached out with on hand to pull away the blankets and dropped Damas into bed, ignoring the sounds of protest the boy started to make. He untangled his son’s fingers from the fabric of his shirt and pulled the blankets over him.

“Good night, squirt.”

“Story?”

“It’s too late for that-”

“Mama always tells me a story,” Damas said quietly pulling up the blankets to his chin to shield him from the cold. Jak sighed and sat on the edge of his son’s bed. None of his stories are suitable for three year old ears, that’s why he normally let the squirt go to bed with Keira, or let Daxter’s stories lull him to sleep.

“Pa, can you tell me more about Haven City? Mama says it’s nice there.”

“It is, squirt,” Jak said quietly, mindful of the slightly opened door leading out into the hallway. “It’s a nice city with people like you and me.”

“Can we visit there?” Damas asked from underneath his blankets.

Jak reached to comb back a strand of dark teal hair from his son’s forehead. “Eventually,” he said, “when you’re older.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” he smiled. “What do you want to hear about?”

“The time you and Daxter took down that meanie Kor!”

 _I’ll kill Daxter_ , he thought to himself. He would have to rein back in the details, but he told him the quick story of how he was in Haven for the time of Kor, and how he ended up out here. He didn’t tell his son about the banishment, about how the whole city blamed him for the infection of metalheads that swarmed the city once he won his war with Kor. He would tell him all of that another day, but not now.

 

*

 

Damas took to the deserts with his vehicle at the age of seventeen.

Swerving in and out of sand dunes, he knew that from the city walls, his father was watching. He didn’t go too far from the city’s walls as his mother had told him about a sand storm on the way in from the west, but he desperately wanted to see what it was like to drive on sand.

Jak watched Damas from the city’s walls with a faint smile. Perched on his shoulder was Daxter who did the same, commenting about how Damas reminded him of Jak when they first stumbled out onto the desert all those years ago.

They weren’t alone on the wall – tugging at the fabric of his shirt was his youngest child, a daughter called Arianne, while sitting on the edge of the wall was his middle child, a son called Eavan who wanted to be out there with his older brother.

Daxter hopped down from Jak’s shoulder to stand in front of the youngest child. At six, she loved the ottsel and his antics around the palace. She was like Jak, while Jak’s two boys were like their mother. His heart panged at the thought of Keira – after Arianne was born, she got sick. So sick, he left Sig in charge of Spargus while he drove himself and Keira to Haven City to Samos. They didn’t get through the city’s gates before the sage, Ashelin and Torn came to help in any way they could.

They still didn’t know what plagued her – most days she was still the bright and loving woman he’d grown up with and married, but there were days when all of that would leave her and she would stay in bed hiding beneath blankets and refusing any help Jak offered.

Jak snapped back into the present at the sight of the sand dunes starting to move. The winds were beginning to pick up. “Damas!” he yelled, catching the seventeen year olds attention. “Get back inside the walls!”

“At least he got to try driving on sand,” Daxter said with a smile, despite Arianne pulling at his ears and his goggles nested on his head.

Jak nodded and gathered his daughter into his arms with a huff. Eavan climbed to his feet and followed behind his father and the ottsel as they made their way back inside to the main part of the city.

Damas drove into the Wastelander’s holding place and got out of the car. With armour and goggle resembling his father’s, he started to look a lot like him in the recent years, with some of his teal hair turning into light green with traces of blond.  He joined his father and took his sister from his arms. Daxter liked to joke that Jak was beginning to get old – that his old joints wouldn’t hold him up forever, but it was a joke that withered away quickly. They had talks about Daxter being immortal, being a Precursor, and that he would be left behind.

“I want you to take care of them when Keira and I are gone,” Jak said to him one night after a bout of illness struck Keira. They sat out on the balcony after Jak had managed to lull her to sleep. As they both watched the moon cast light over the empty desert, the conversation started.

“Please look after them when we’re gone.”

“Of course I will, buddy,” Daxter tried to say with a smile, but looking over at his friend – the way the moon’s light only brought out the shadows in his cheeks, and underneath his eyes.

He knocked back another gulp of wine before standing up. “Thank you Dax,” he said wearily before walking into the bedroom to join Keira in sleep.

 

*

 

When Keira died, the whole of Spargus wept.

She was their Queen – their leading mechanic who would help anyone in need of repairs or advice, she would greet anyone who said hello to her. The vigil at night lasted the entire night, with candles being lit on the main wall to the front of the city. Jak stood to the front of the mourners with Damas to his left and Eavan to his right. Arianne walked forward to put the last candle from Keira’s family onto the concrete of the wall. She went back and pushed her face into Damas’ chest, with sobs wracking her body.

It had been a few years later before Jak was to join her.

That morning, he had woken with slight pains wringing through his arms and chest. They stopped just as quickly as they went, and he groaned out of bed to meet with Damas. He had put his eldest son in the authority of Prince regent, while Arianne was put into Queen Regent until Damas managed to settle down from a hectic life of driving to find a Queen.

While Jak shuffled down the hallway, Arianne gave him a small smile and used her own arm to support him. “You should be resting, Papa.”

Jak waved his hand. “I should be ruling a city, sweetling.”

Arianne rolled her eyes before the pair entered the main throne room, where a gathering of citizens were there to ask favours and reprisals of Damas. Jak knew the tidiness of the job, so didn’t bother to huff when he saw the way his son was slouched on the throne, with his chin resting against his fist.

They men speaking hushed themselves at the sight of Arianne and her father. They all gave low bows and only continued when Jak waved at them to do so. Arianne glanced behind her father’s shoulder to her oldest brother, who perked up at the sight of his father on the move. She smiled gently at him before he mirrored the action and continued listening to his future people.

Midday was when the pains returned. He wandered through the library searching for a book he would read to Eavan when he was a child. When the pains struck, he doubled over and reached out to clutch at the nearest shelf. Arianne was still with him and came running over to help her father.

“It’s alright, sweetling,” Jak shook his head and tried to straighten back up himself. Arianne ignored him and held onto his arm and wrapped her other arm around his back.

“You should go back to bed, Papa,” she insisted. They managed to make it to one of the chairs that were arranged in the middle of the library. He leant back into the chair with a heavy sigh, and looked up at his daughter. She gave him a worried look before kneeling down. She took his hand and pressed two fingers to his wrist.

“There’s no need for that, sweetling,” he started, but was cut off by a sharp look she gave him. She pulled away with a heavy sigh.

“I’ll get you back to your room, and ask Eavan to call in a sage. You’re not well, Papa.”

The night was when it happened for a last time. The sage came and told the children that it was too late. Jak feigned sleep, but listened to the conversation the sage had with his children. Arianne fell to the bed and sat beside her father, combing her fingers through is grey hair. Damas had only asked how much longer was left, before Jak heard him quietly take his leave, only to hear a fist slam into the hallway wall soon after. Eavan paced the room asking the sage every question he could think of.

When they had left him, Jak stood from his bed and walked to the balcony. Arianne was the last to leave him, and had to be pried away by Eavan who merely said that he needed to be left alone.

Outside, the black sky was flecked with stars and the distant glowing lights of the palace inside Haven City. His chair was still there, looking out onto the vast plains of white-lit sands. He sat down heavily into it and pressed a withered hand to his heart.

“It’s time to leave them, Jak,” Keira’s voice sounded around him. He closed his eyes and sighed back into his chair. He took one last lingering look at the bright white moon before he closed his eyes again and drifted off into sleep.

 

*

 

“The King of Spargus, Jak Mar, has died. Sources tell us he had been ill for a number of years and died peacefully in his sleep. He is succeeded as King of Spargus by his eldest son, Damas Mar, and his two other children, Eavan Mar and Arianne Mar, will remain within the city as regents. Our thoughts and prayers go to the family, as to the citizens of Spargus. He was a hero to us all.”

Daxter clicked off the television before breaking down behind the bar. Tess had been in the room, and promptly left once she heard the first sentence of the news report. Once the tears had been wrung out, Daxter climbed back up to the bar’s countertop and took a few deep breaths.

“Tess!”

The blond haired girl came back into the main part of the bar. “Yeah?”

“Call Ashelin,” he told her, hopping down to head to the back room to pack his bags. “Tell her I want a ride out to Spargus.”

**Author's Note:**

> I may write a whole series of these because I forgot how much I LOVE THESE GAMES but you all know me and actually getting to things...I have no college right now, and not until a few months, so I'll see what I can do.


End file.
